Re: Which is better for SEO an "UNDERSCORE" or "HYPHEN"?

Originally Posted by zartoop

EXCEPT that recommendation is misleading and downright wrong because it's from years ago and mid 2007 (also according to cutts) google now treats underscores as word separators not joiners - therefore the complete reasoning behind the original cutts recommendation is flat out wrong. It amazes me that people can read an article and not look at the date.

If that were true, then why do I get this:

solar electric: 1,210,000 for solar electric.
solar-electric: 963,000 for solar-electric.
solar_electric: of about 895 for solar_electric.

I have seen Matt Cutts point out on several occassions that underscores have a different meaning, and that they were indexed as normal characters at one point, and even if that does change in Google, there is no guarantee that the change will carry over to other search engines.

I have seen a lot of sources conduct basic tests to try to determine which method is better (such as the test at URLs (Update)) but most of these tests are from 2007 or before. Personally, though, I tend to be conservative and if a particular method has a historical track record of being well supported, I tend to stay with it until something comes along which is demonstatable as being an improvement.

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